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CASCADE -- THE DEBUT NOVEL by MARYANNE O’HARA

An artist in the 1930s finds herself caught in the age-old struggle between duty and desire. 1935: Massachusetts will soon decide whether to flood the valley town Cascade, to build a great reservoir. If Cascade is chosen, the town will be literally wiped from the maps, drowned. Loosely based on the very real projects which flooded many towns in Rhode Island and Massachusetts – progress in the form of the Scituate and Quabbin Reservoirs - Rhode Islanders will enjoy Ms. O’Hara’s fictional account with a similar project as the background. Cascade interweaves a town's impending destruction and America's struggles during the Depression with small-town anti-Semitism and the bohemian art world of Greenwich Village.

About the Author

A graduate of Emerson College’s MFA program, Maryanne O’Hara was a longtime associate editor at Ploughshares magazine. Her short stories have been published in Five Points, The North American Review, The Crescent Review, and Redbook, as well as the literary anthologies MicroFiction, Brevity & Echo, The Art of Friction, and Flash Fiction: Youth. She lives near Boston with her family.